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Keller @ Large: Stop Looking For Easy Answers

BOSTON (CBS) - This is going to come as a shock to some of the lower-wattage bulbs among us, but very few issues in life lend themselves to easy, cut-and-dried answers.

And that's too bad.

As the bad news kept pouring into the newsroom Thursday, I'm sure I wasn't the only one craving a few pat answers and easy solutions to the horror of it all.

Can't we even count on taking a commercial airline flight somewhere without fear of being shot out of the sky?

No, we can't, not when there are insecure dictators like Vladimir Putin clinging to fantasies about a restored Russian empire and acting them out by invading sovereign neighbors, installing thugs to destabilize them, and arming them to the teeth.

What's the easy-to-digest action we should take if/when it's confirmed that's what happened?

Hillary Clinton suggests it's time for Europe to get tough, a true foreign-policy oxymoron.

No, there are no easy answers.

Sending Hamas to a richly-deserved oblivion won't buy Israel peace; the process of doing it is likely creating the next generation of Hamas. And if the Israel haters don't get it by now that Israel isn't going to be driven into the sea, they never will get it.

Shipping all those poor kids huddling at our border off to holding pens before shipping them home will solve nothing. It'll probably just create more refugees.

But building a high wall around our country won't make us a better place either. No easy answers there, and certainly no sign of leaders at the top in DC prepared to go beyond pandering.

Sorry to be such a downer, but maybe there's hope here.

If we all give up seeking the easy answers, we'll have no choice but to start working on the hard ones.

Listen to Jon's commentary:

Keller at Large July 18 2014

You can listen to Keller At Large on WBZ News Radio every weekday at 7:55 a.m. You can also watch Jon on WBZ-TV News.

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